Diapers For Fatima

Companies trying to reach America's expanding Hispanic population should listen to Julieta Parilla and her family. Parilla, who emigrated from Guadalajara, Mexico, with her relatives eight years ago, is preaching about Pampers. Sitting on a four-poster living-room bed in the cramped apartment she shares with her baby daughter, mother, sister, brother-in-law and five nieces and nephews in Norwalk, Calif., a predominantly Hispanic working-class suburb of Los Angeles, she waxes eloquent about the diaper brand's absorption abilities and its "softer cloth." At a baby shower before her 6-month-old daughter Fatima was born, a friend gave Parilla a competing diaper as a gift. She regrets ignoring her sister's advice to stay away from other brands. Those other diapers, she says, caused her daughter to break out in a rash.

Although the endorsement by her sister and prenatal nurses turned Parilla on to Pampers, a few marketing tactics from Procter & Gamble, Pampers' $51 billion parent company, have helped the 21-year-old single mother stay loyal to the brand. Parilla recalls a Pampers television ad she liked, broadcast in both English and Spanish, showing a smiling baby crawling in the diapers. The nurses at Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park, Calif, gave Parilla free samples of Pampers and other P&G brands like Crest and Tide as she checked out after Fatima's birth (Parilla uses Crest, although she prefers Cheer, another P&G brand, to Tide). At a local health clinic, she picked up a copy of Avanzando con Tu Familia (Helping Your Family Move Ahead), a P&G-published Martha Stewart Living for recent Hispanic immigrants that reaches 1 million homes across the country. Besides coupons for P&G products, the magazine prints recipes, exercise tips and other lifestyle advice. Parilla especially liked a story on how to clean the belly of your newborn, and she has been impressed by P&G's support for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.

With such clever tactics, Proctor & Gamble has hooked Parilla and a whole lot of other Hispanic Americans. The Hispanic population is growing faster than any other group in the U.S., and its buying power is soaring too. By most accounts, P&G is leading the pack in the race to grab its business. Competitors like Colgate-Palmolive, which imported fabric softener Suavitel from Latin America, and Unilever, with grass-roots campaigns like storefront tastings for brands such as Hellman's mayonnaise and Rag?? spaghetti sauce in Hispanic neighborhoods, are also active. But P&G spent $107 million on Spanish-media advertising in the first nine months of 2004, tops in the U.S. (excluding Lexicon Marketing Corp., which sells products that teach English to Spanish speakers).

Six of the 12 brands that P&G's ethnic-marketing division manages are ranked No. 1 among Hispanics in their categories, and five others are ranked second. "Senior management has tested our will and challenged us to blanket the market," says Graciela Eleta, director of P&G's Multicultural Business Development Organization, a unit the conglomerate created in 1999 to reach African, Asian and Hispanic Americans. "We Hispanics like to see who's going to put toda la carne al asador," says Alex L??pez Negrete, president of Lopez Negrete Communications, a Houston-based Hispanic marketing company. "All the meat on the grill. That's who wins."